Concerns about Elementalist

Comments

I was thinking about this actually; perhaps add an increased target cap of 10, rather than 5, to Soothing Power. Or make it baseline. I think also Healing Rain could stand to have its target cap increased to 10.

I was thinking about this actually; perhaps add an increased target cap of 10, rather than 5, to Soothing Power. Or make it baseline. I think also Healing Rain could stand to have its target cap increased to 10.

Yeah thought about healing rain also, and I thing it would be great there too, but soothing mist is more important to me as it may affect all weapons and not only staff.
The good thing is, these traits are in no meta setup, so raising it to 10 would most likely not break anything. Worst that could happen is making them more viable, but most likely not op, especially not when done in PvE only. Even though it would maybe even more welcomed in WvW...
It would help to get rid of those 5/4/1 group setups, and I think that would streamline the experience without taking away anything cool really.

Viable != Optimal

Not viable = You only get carried, 10 players with a build as "viable as yours" can't properly do it.

To cellofrog: he spend 12000 hours on his elemtalist. You exspect everyone to do this just to get to a decent level? He killed Turai Ossa with all gamblits, in on of his answers he wrote:

@Lasiurus.4067 said:
But anyway it was really enjoyable, even with no AP/Title, for the challenge, & how I was so kitten happy when I finally did it after a full night of try hard, at 8 am.

Nearly all the fight is "scripted", each skill is calculated to be in the right order, after hundred of try & death, I know that if I go in this direction with FGS, boss will follow me with this attack, then this one, etc. Its like SAB tribulation mode, you learn from your death/error to learn the good path.
For example at 0:58 I dont use Earth #4 to DPS (its instant cast) because I knew I would need it 20s later to reflect his projectile before breakbar. All is calculated, but for this I had to die a lot & a lot.

But I took me like 3h of full try hard to even reach the first phase with break bar. With boss still at 100%
First hours were very discouraging haha.

You see the dedication. It took him 15 hours. imagine what he learned in all the other time as an ele. Ele should be difficult to play, but you should be able to win a 1vs1 against an average mesmer before you trained 1000 hours.

@alez.2137 said:
I cant believe what Im reading in this post regarding PvP/WvW. Ppl please see this video (published the past week so skills are up-to-date) and reconsider asking for pvp buffs in heal, more health and defenses:

Ele is super op on the right hands. Notice he doesnt even need to use the normal healing skill and he can easily deal 1v2 with one of the class you are mention as op here, ranger sb.

That is Cello. I would love to see a vid from you, alez.2137, playing as an Ele in WvW or PvP and able to do only 5% of Celle did. In PvE, I would love to see a vid from you doing Raids, Fractals with the dps meter on.

Please amaze me and many others. After seeing your vid. I will never say a word about Ele again. its a promise.

Ps: Vid should be in this current patch, not in the future patches where Ele got balanced.

I never played weaver, so I cannot do what this guys does. But, unless he is using cheats (he isnt) you all experiences Eles can play like him. I dont want to talk about other classes that really need improvements because this will distort what Im saying, but Imho, you Eles atm have a very strong PVE dps (top 3 class), and a very strong WvW roamer, and ofc very strong sPvP duelist.

Translation: I don't play it, never have, and have no clue what I'm talking about, but the grass is always greener on the other side. Lol. Moving on...

Can someone elaborate why Cellofrag, and other high tier eles, shouldnt be taken into account in the balance equation. I mean, if you buff cello character, instead of being superb he is gona be godmode.

Does this guy have 10 fingers in each hand? Has he super-human reaction times? Its an AI? Does he plays with different skills or lower cooldowns than you?

You asking me to do 5% of what he does. Probably if you just play as good as half of that he does, u wont even be asking for ele buffs. Of course, the day I hear Cello, or another top tier, saying his class need a buff (like I've been hearing from other classes top players in the last months), I'll just fold and not gonna discuss if you need a buff or not.

First, sindrener is pretty much godmode. Vaanss is pretty much godmode. Cellofrag is pretty much godmode. They are all able to take on many enemies at once alone .So? Should we nerf all the classes according to them? Should we nerf thief so hard that even Sindrener will only be able to take on an average mesmer? No, ofc. not. They do take the maximum skill level into consideration, but they don't balance around it. And to be honest, Sindrener as a roamer is pretty much unkillable, because the potential of thieves goes close to infinity. Game is made for the crowd, not for the top tiers only. Balance has been in that direction for a long time, with each xpac having builds that are easier to play than before.

Now for your comments:
"Does he have 10 finger?"
No, but u sure think this is all about who spam skills the fastest right? I can spam it just as fast, but I will still die 100x faster than him.

"Does he have super-human reaction times?"
No, but this game isn't just about reaction time. Are you sure you are playing this game?

"It's an AI?"
Makes no sense. Cello is better than all AI's together if they were to exist.

" Does he plays with different skills or lower cooldowns than you? "
No.

Also, playing half as good as cello means you still kill nothing and will die all the time. Just saying. Even experieced eles can only perform around 10-60% of cello's level. Not a fact, but from my experience. I've only ever met one ele besides cello that is "good" and plays sword weaver, but even that guy couldn't kill my spellbreaker, despite me having almost no experience as a spellbreaker. But when you fight cello, you know he is different from the others, by far.

In general, you like to use optimistic terms such as "experienced" and try to equate that with a top tier player. Or, expecting that these "experienced" eles all can become high end E-Sports players. No wonder no one can take you seriously. If you want people to take you seriously, make a weaver, play it, roam around and kill 1vsX like these "Pros" . You will quickly notice how much trouble it is to even kill a single mesmer, not to mention a group of players. And make sure to record it, so we can all see how OP weaver is, and how fast someone can master this class.

@alez.2137 said:
I cant believe what Im reading in this post regarding PvP/WvW. Ppl please see this video (published the past week so skills are up-to-date) and reconsider asking for pvp buffs in heal, more health and defenses:

Ele is super op on the right hands. Notice he doesnt even need to use the normal healing skill and he can easily deal 1v2 with one of the class you are mention as op here, ranger sb.

That is Cello. I would love to see a vid from you, alez.2137, playing as an Ele in WvW or PvP and able to do only 5% of Celle did. In PvE, I would love to see a vid from you doing Raids, Fractals with the dps meter on.

Please amaze me and many others. After seeing your vid. I will never say a word about Ele again. its a promise.

Ps: Vid should be in this current patch, not in the future patches where Ele got balanced.

I've been running cellofrag's build in WvW myself for the better part of the summer in NA. It is extremely effective in 1vXing unskillful players. If you battle another serious PvPer, you will not be face rolling as he does. The pressure of the build is also lacking, all it takes is for a player to kite you about for it all to wear off. And good luck fighting anyone who can cleanse conditions fast, because your raw damage output just can't make up for that extra condi damage. Cellofrag's build is really, really good and he has contributed alot to the meta of Elementalist. But remember that even in those highlight vids, he is cherry picking his best encounters to make an entertaining highlight reel. His videos prove Weaver (not core ele or tempest) can be played effectively using a sustain heavy build that uses condis to help with keeping the damage constant. Or, in other words, a hybrid build.

I think my issue isn't that Weaver can succeed in running a hybrid build, its more that Elementalist has little pay off for running anything other than Hybrid, then more often than not fails at even running hybrid due to the classes weaknesses. At least thats my take on it.

I don't think you could say Hybrid sword weaver exactly 'succeeds' either in WvW. I find it comical that people would consider such builds 'effective' when:
1) WvW roaming doesn't actually contribute much to anything unless you can kill stragglers and claim objectives fast enough.
2) Other classes have the kill potential to settle things much quicker and don't need to rely on stat-investment into surviving. i.e. actually prey on separated zergling necros who are trying to regroup much more efficiently.
3) Winning 1vX just doesn't happen if they simply revive each other. This is especially true on ele who doesn't have enough raw pressure to force people off rezzing (see 2).
4) Any decent mesmer/warrior/ranger/thief/engi would know when to disengage when they are losing. You aren't going to be defeating any of the meta roaming builds with their mobility especially when your damage pretty much drops to zero when they simply move away out of melee range. So you're pretty much only going to be killing inexperienced players since the veteran WvWer understands 1) 2) and 3) with roaming actually being helpful only if you kill the scattered guys fast enough before they pile up.

What we CAN be grateful for though is the remaining glass staff potential in zergs but even that grows ever more questionable with more reliable means of damage with other professions powercreeping while Ele keeps either gets nerfed or remains stagnant. Even with Lava Font being buffed back abit it's kill securing potential isn't like it once was but hey it's better for tagging downed players now!

Because the other thread about tempest/support might not get any traction, I'll just dump this here:

@Usagi.4835 said:
Floating an idea because I only just realised how much raw healing output and burst healing Ventari revs are capable of in the right situation, thanks to their plethora of outgoing healing modifiers (with all modifiers, a Transference sigil and Monk runes rather than Water, if I calculated correctly, 130% outgoing healing effectiveness; without Invoking Harmony, which is conditional upon swapping legends, around 110-120%). I've not got a rev but am now tempted to test it out. The whole Salvation line for Revenant synergises so well. They benefit a lot from investing fairly heavily into Minstrel's and their scaling from Bountiful Maintenance Oils is a lot better, going off numbers alone.

In another thread, somebody mentioned increasing the target cap of Soothing Mist from 5 to 10. I suggested adding it onto Soothing Power i.e. the trait increases target cap of Soothing Mist to 10, and also perhaps increase the target cap of Healing Rain to 10, though that might be asking for too much?

Auras aside for now, since they're looking to give each spec a loose 'identity', I was thinking that if Ventari revs excel at burst healing, perhaps support tempests can occupy a niche in providing the best sustained AOE heals for large groups?

As it stands, Invigorating Torrents is virtually identical to Soothing Disruption. I suspect it'd be straddling the line of powercreep in adding too much to one trait but do you think it'd be possible to instead move Powerful Aura to major master in Tempest and then condense Invigorating Torrents into Elemental Bastion, perhaps removing the AOE Frost Aura at the same time? Or if Powerful Aura were to become the GM trait, consider combining it with Invigorating Torrents since auras and, to a degree, tempest are skewed towards group-play? So, for instance, in the Tempest line:

Powerful Aura, Major Master
Any aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies.

Elemental Bastion, Major Grandmaster
Heal allies you grant an aura to. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

Powerful Aura, Major Grandmaster
Any aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

It'd open up a slot for a different GM in Water. I think some traits could be condensed. I don't like Latent Stamina as there's already too much vigor in the Tempest line so it's redundant, and I'm not sure many people take or even consider it since it's so mediocre compared to the other two.

@Usagi.4835 said:
Because the other thread about tempest/support might not get any traction, I'll just dump this here:

@Usagi.4835 said:
Floating an idea because I only just realised how much raw healing output and burst healing Ventari revs are capable of in the right situation, thanks to their plethora of outgoing healing modifiers (with all modifiers, a Transference sigil and Monk runes rather than Water, if I calculated correctly, 130% outgoing healing effectiveness; without Invoking Harmony, which is conditional upon swapping legends, around 110-120%). I've not got a rev but am now tempted to test it out. The whole Salvation line for Revenant synergises so well. They benefit a lot from investing fairly heavily into Minstrel's and their scaling from Bountiful Maintenance Oils is a lot better, going off numbers alone.

In another thread, somebody mentioned increasing the target cap of Soothing Mist from 5 to 10. I suggested adding it onto Soothing Power i.e. the trait increases target cap of Soothing Mist to 10, and also perhaps increase the target cap of Healing Rain to 10, though that might be asking for too much?

Auras aside for now, since they're looking to give each spec a loose 'identity', I was thinking that if Ventari revs excel at burst healing, perhaps support tempests can occupy a niche in providing the best sustained AOE heals for large groups?

As it stands, Invigorating Torrents is virtually identical to Soothing Disruption. I suspect it'd be straddling the line of powercreep in adding too much to one trait but do you think it'd be possible to instead move Powerful Aura to major master in Tempest and then condense Invigorating Torrents into Elemental Bastion, perhaps removing the AOE Frost Aura at the same time? Or if Powerful Aura were to become the GM trait, consider combining it with Invigorating Torrents since auras and, to a degree, tempest are skewed towards group-play? So, for instance, in the Tempest line:

Powerful Aura, Major Master
Any aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies.

Elemental Bastion, Major Grandmaster
Heal allies you grant an aura to. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

Powerful Aura, Major Grandmaster
Any aura you grant yourself is granted to nearby allies. Auras you grant also grant regeneration and vigor.

It'd open up a slot for a different GM in Water. I think some traits could be condensed. I don't like Latent Stamina as there's already too much vigor in the Tempest line so it's redundant, and I'm not sure many people take or even consider it since it's so mediocre compared to the other two.

Before tempest, there was basically 0 healing or any support coming out of auras (not like core ele has many auras to begin with), so I really dont understand why powerful aura even existed before HoT.

Imo water should have regen/heal/cleanse on aura application (and maybe vulnerability on aura detonation with improved duration on frost aura) while powerful aura becomes minor trait of tempest. Everything that tempest does is through auras so I really dont see why powerful aura should be major trait on any spec.

Considering that fire is offensive spec, but it received defensive aura trait, maybe water can get full offensive one - apply vulnerability on top of chill on being hit and freeze enemies on detonation. Keep the heal on auras on tempest. There's so many possibilities...

Deso's favorite FROG
Master of afk and kiting
The God of Pips and Gud Deeps
Froggo himself

Elementalist should have never been forced into melee range. Anyone who wants to argue that point, take a step back from gameplay mechanics and just look at the issue from a thematic perspective. Here you have a frail person (low HP), in armor made of cloth, running headlong into a melee brawl with some mountain of flesh in plate armor, to willingly trade blows with them. All of this, while lacking the evades/agility of even a medium armor/health thief.

That doesn't make any sense. No rational actor would do that. "Because magic" isn't really an answer, either. It's not as if the Elementalist has a unique relationship with arcane energy in the GW2 gameworld, every single class uses supernatural abilities, so it's a level playing field in that regard.

The Elementalist has always been a thematic mess in this game, and the only fix is re-focusing the entire class, not just one elite spec, around ranged combat. D/D should have been, at most, a niche playstyle. Weaver as an elite spec is fine, but not if it's at the expense of the base class and other elites.

It's fine to discuss gameplay mechanic issues, but IMO the issues with Elementalist are deeper than that. Anet needs to figure out what they want this class to be.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:
Those of you who care about the ele and its balance, please join this thread and continue to add your thoughtful and constructive comments. Thank you.

Dear Gaile Gray,

sPVP:

Thanks you for adding an option to rid-of from water. Implementation is not good yet, but It's a good direction at least.
Unfortunately still not possible to survive vs Mesmer or Necro 1v1 without water trait.
It's not enough conditions removal from auras because detonation skills are too situational and unreachable and have too big CD.
Mesmer and Necro can put conditions 4 times faster than we can remove. Even with [Cleansing Fire] and [Burning Fire]

But we asked to add sustain to Ele, last patch did nothing with this...NOTHING (even worse: another nerf of reptide...)
So still any Warrior or Engineer or Mesmer can win us EASILY 1v1 ... This is unfair and not fun.

Please consider to add at least stun-break to signets and stances and 3 stacks of stability to [Bolstered Elements],
and for sure add self detonate and stun-break to auras...

Something i find odd is that a lot of "support" classes are getting 10 targets caps on there support effects but the old aura support from ele still only effects 5 ppl even with the icd of reactivation is in play so you cant be chilled by other ppl even if they all have frost aura. So the only thing the aura support is missing out on is being able to effect 10 ppl with support and not being able to offensively effect more targets.

What with the 5 target cap on ele support effects its even odd as the old ideal of balancing behind ele is that its self support was aoe so it was weaker and now other classes have 10 targets support but the support effects are often stronger.

Personally, I think the profession needs a deep redesign, not just numbers here and there. The whole profession needs to be analyzed from the bottom to the top, including weapon, slot, and mechanic skills. At the current state, you're just applying bandaids to something that is broken at the early design phase.

I think the major problem is that there's way too many skills per weapon. Yeah, that's what makes ele fun, but that's what's killing balance as well, and to be fair, I'm tired of the same thing for 6 years, with no positive changes in the horizon, only nerfs and nerfs that don't address the main issue: We need to work twice as hard for the same results, or worse.

My take on a deep redesign:

Reduce attunements from 4 to 2. Merge fire+earth (condition damage and defense), and water+air (direct damage and healing). This reduces the total amount of individual weapon skills from 20 to 10, and removes a lot of useless and redundant skills.

Add weapon swap. Now we can switch between melee and ranged weapons in the middle of combat, and the total amount of weapon skills becomes 10+10=20, going back to the original numbers, but with two weapon sets instead, with their own distinct roles.

Attunements give the profession personality, but they aren't an "impactful game mechanic" per se. I'd suggest revamping the combo system, and giving elementalist their own piece, letting them merge combo fields for unique effects. For example, fire+water=steam (burning+healing), water+earth=mud (slow+protection), mud+fire=clay (immobilize). The new gameplay is about swapping the two attunements constantly to perform combos with the specific order and timing.

Slot skills need a review too. With conjures removed, minions could be made their own slot skill family, taking them away from glyphs. Add the missing healing skill and elite skills, and make them more impactful for the profession, because right now, most slot skills feel really useless and situational, whereas other professions use them all the time, almost as much as their weapon skills.

Elementalists are far from the only profession with design problems, but they're right at the top next to revenant.

This thread has been at the top of the forum 2 weeks, had 10K views, 300 replies and in that time even outside the Ele forum we saw this poll and this poll - both giving Ele twice as many votes for being the most underpowered class as all the other classes combined.

Can we get some kind of response from a Systems team Dev acknowledging the thread has at least been read by the team, with a brief summary of what they have taken away from the thread as the core issues and how to approach them.

One thing that I was wondering was how badly designed Staff is. Let's take a look at what each attunement is "supposed" to do:
Fire: raw damage and burning, area of effect/lingering fields
Air: critical chance and critical damage, single/cleave target
Earth: bleeding, single/close target

Let's see what the main hand weapons do now:
Fire
Scepter: raw damage and burning
Dagger: raw damage and burning
Sword: raw damage and burning
Staff: no burning, the most widely used skills, Fireball and Lava Font do not have any burning. Meteor Shower doesn't have burning either. Weird outlier here.

Air
Scepter: single target damage
Dagger: cleave/close range damage
Sword: cleave/close range damage
Staff: does it even do damage? Is there anyone that swaps to Air on Staff to deal damage?

Earth
Scepter: lots of bleeding, single/close target
Dagger: lots of bleeding, single/close target
Sword: lots of bleeding, single/close target
Staff: where is the good bleeding? Eruption is slow and Shock Wave has a long cooldown

Other than Water skills (damage, vulnerability, healing) all the Elementalist weapons are consistent with the exception of the Staff which follows completely different rules. No wonder why the Staff meta has been to camp fire for the last 6 years, because the other attunements on Staff are only situational useful for some crowd control or healing.

Dunno for the years before HoT, but ever since Tempest was around meta was never to camp fire, though to be fair it always used something else to cover the dps downtime of switching into Air. Weaver changed that a bit with its shorter attunement cooldown and the availability of two damage skills in F/A.

That being said, a revised air and earth weapon skills would be nice. Particularly Air should offer more offensive power.

Feel like conjuration line should just be gotten rid of and isntead we swap our current conjurations over to kit. 30 seconds isnt really much time, especially since other weapons of other classes do conjurations job much better, no point in the share if the abilities have all been nerfed. No point in the 30 second limit either.

Seriously just make them kits and theyd be so much better then they are now.

I have been hearing that arena net is going in a "good direction" with changes, but I never hear that they have reached a good destination. Nothing changes with the state of this class until arena net decides they want it to exist as a strong class. Which won't happen. I've given up trying to be hopeful for this class. It won't happen.

Easy Weaver fix, just swap "Swift Revenge" with "Master's Fortitude" spot in trait line and you are boss now. Tada.

Core and Tempest are dead, we might just need to reverse some of the old nerfs.

Sword Weavers are decent 1v1 vs non POF metas in wvw. Sadly sword still has low packet damage, very small range and is easy to read. Good luck catching holo, mirage, or firebrand if fleeing from battle. You will never catch the others. And chill from Reapers gibs you so hard.

@Waisenpai.6028 said:
Easy Weaver fix, just swap "Swift Revenge" with "Master's Fortitude" spot in trait line and you are boss now. Tada.

Core and Tempest are dead, we might just need to reverse some of the old nerfs.

That sounds like the WORST possible nerf to me (having to choose between invaluable hp and stability). Even for the builds that would benefit from it I don't see that much appeal. It would completely destroy the weaver builds that I love playing, and I'm sure it would too for many others.

It's probably too late to contribute to this thread, which I have only just noticed since mostly I only read the WvW and Lore forums but here's my 2c anyway.

I have three accounts and all the classes in multiple but my most-played class on all three accounts is Elementalist. I have all three expansions on one account, two on the second and just Core on the third. I've been playing since Launch without any breaks. All of them are basic Berserker builds, largely unchanged for years.

Two are Tempests, one is Core Ele. I could play Weaver on one account but I tried it and disliked (too fiddly) it so I don't. I am very happy with my Eles, all three of them.

My main game mode these days is WvW, where I play Tempest and find it enjoyable and effective. I mostly play support in zergs, where I have no major issues or complaints. It would always be nice to have more DPS to finish off downed players faster and the nerf to Meteor Shower has slowed down my ability to destroy siege, which is annoying, but those are minor things.

Regular open world PvE is so easy I doubt it makes any substantive difference what class or build you use. I don't do Fractals, Raids or Dungeons so I have no opinion on what's good or bad about the Ele there. I haven't done PvP in years so I have no idea about that either.

About the only place I do feel some squishiness as a Berserker Staff Ele is in Living Story instances so I do those on my Necro instead. That's why we have multiple character slots.

Obviously I'm not going to complain if my Eles get made more powerful or effective but I'm not feeling the need in the game modes I play.

@Waisenpai.6028 said:
Easy Weaver fix, just swap "Swift Revenge" with "Master's Fortitude" spot in trait line and you are boss now. Tada.

Core and Tempest are dead, we might just need to reverse some of the old nerfs.

So basically the whole mid column becomes useless for all power builds? No thanks.

@Poelala.2830 said:
I have been hearing that arena net is going in a "good direction" with changes, but I never hear that they have reached a good destination. Nothing changes with the state of this class until arena net decides they want it to exist as a strong class. Which won't happen. I've given up trying to be hopeful for this class. It won't happen.

Depends on your perspective. In PvE the situation definitely improved. I would personally like to see Staff a bit higher and Sword a bit lower, but the fact remains they are both usable, even if Staff is generally the suboptimal choice. And not only that, Fresh Air Tempest is back as well. 3 builds to choose from is way better than just one, and underperforming at that.

I love the ideal of aura detonation its just all the core lines need to have some part in working with the effect. I like to see air line get super speed on aura detonation earth line get stab on aura and detonation and water give out resistance. The main ideal is to add in these strong melee aimed boons for auras as to use aura and detonation to there strongest effect ele must be at melee ranged. As things stand ele lacks sustables melee support it has at best strong burst self support to get out but this only works as a ranged class trick not a melee who needs to be in real danger to land its effects.

Mostly pvp / wvw aimed i guess it would fit in pve but most boons do not work right vs ai.

@Waisenpai.6028 said:
Easy Weaver fix, just swap "Swift Revenge" with "Master's Fortitude" spot in trait line and you are boss now. Tada.

Core and Tempest are dead, we might just need to reverse some of the old nerfs.

So basically the whole mid column becomes useless for all power builds? No thanks.

@Poelala.2830 said:
I have been hearing that arena net is going in a "good direction" with changes, but I never hear that they have reached a good destination. Nothing changes with the state of this class until arena net decides they want it to exist as a strong class. Which won't happen. I've given up trying to be hopeful for this class. It won't happen.

Depends on your perspective. In PvE the situation definitely improved. I would personally like to see Staff a bit higher and Sword a bit lower, but the fact remains they are both usable, even if Staff is generally the suboptimal choice. And not only that, Fresh Air Tempest is back as well. 3 builds to choose from is way better than just one, and underperforming at that.

I thought I'd add my two cents to this discussion, even though I've seen many threads like this since the launch of GW2, and things have not seemed to change for the better of Elementalist. This is a view based on PvP/WvW, in truth there has always been strong PvE builds for just about any class.

I feel that the elementalist has just fallen behind the curve when it comes to updates to the game. Core GW2 they were very versatlile, you typically had more access to a variety of boons and conditions that, at the time, the other classes didn't have as much access too. Which is why the D/D builds were so much fun, you didn't have any real power creep until you started pulling of blasts to buff yourself up. However update after update through this game elementalists keep getting nerfed, and the other classes now have access to everything an elementalist could achieve. Except for that fact that an elementalist had to work for those things through rotation and combos. These days Anet just chucks 10 might on an ability for everyone else and calls it a day.

The above thread is the real reason why the elementalist feel so far behind. The rampant use of stacking boons and conditions that once use to be a feature of the specific classes is now everywhere, and without any complicated combos.

I don't think there is a quick fix to elementalists; I guess a list of bandaids would look something like this:

The core trait lines need new mechanics. Just one example why do we not have more barrier, or resistance in the earth trait line? In truth the trait lines themselves need to have versatility. I understand from a lore perspective that water is generally viewed as a healing element, but not having any real sustain in other trait lines seems to lock everyone into some forum of build with water in it, when it comes to PvP/WvW.

I also never understood how elementalist have the lowest health pool of the cloth classes, imo the mesmer with the built in defensive mechanic of clones should have the lowest cloth health pool, however if we are to keep sitting in the kitten HP arena as Elementalist then there needs to be more focus on traitline bonuses to other stats based off of vitality percentages.

It seems again that updates have dated this classes abilities. To many skills root the elementalist in place. If you have a low hp / low toughness class, this shouldn't be the case.

About all I have. In truth it really is just the power creep of boons and conditions that HoT unleashed on this game that is killing it. If boons and conditions have such emphasis, then the hybrid classes should be the ones with access to most of these things, while other specific classes only have access to a few. That's how I visualize the different classes. Elementalist and Engineers seem like logical choices for varieties in boon and conditions based on their mechanics. Mesmers had their confusion, and misdirections. Guardians always had burning in their mechanics (cleanse and condition). Necros where almost always the condition masters, not so much on the boon side. Thieves should be crit based, but not stacking so much power on their own. Warriors power based. Rangers with range and movement. Some kind of balance like the above. The fact that everyone can now stack 25 stacks of might and or (add high damage condition here), is just a joke. Because of this and the lack of updating defenses on Elementalist you have the current state of the game.

I'm a silly bean, Feanor is correct!
Anet has been crushing elementalist since Pre hot 2015. Anet has beening hating ele since then. I've been playing ele since Factions 2006 and have been enjoying them since. Backin 2005 eles can only PVE DPS with aoe nukes, they were limited in RA arenas and basically punching bags for melee spikes and mesmer or necros. Weaver is like a sustainable flashy punching bag that won't go down right away and has flashy small damage (it looks like big damage with it's exaggerated damage.
You almost feel no damage difference going d/d cele mix with crusader or zerker to pure glass other than you melt on cc. The damage difference in spvp or wvw is very tiny like the care of elementalist in current guild wars 2.

I assume when I purchase the new expansion aka Guild Wars: FTB aka Feed the Bunny we will have those issue assured. ELE in any of it's states are neither META, Great or very good under the 3 tiers of spvp. They are just alive due the fact of their users dedication and endless finger rotatons. I'm hitting 36 years of age can you surprise me with the ele owe as in 2015 spvp standings or how determine eles were in guild wars 1 HOM or RA spiking and raw damage capabilities. We used to be able to CC so hard no soft but strong flat out KD with raw damage in the first game. Eles were awesome and we were tanky too and regen like crazy and were fast. It seems everyone became eles but eles became cluster bot with baby packet damage. What eles need to have is the raw speed, damage, sustain and CC as we had in the old game. Well we nailed sustain and kinda have speed but it split in two different traits so you can't be both. But other classes can be both!

Some one just stopped batting for ele and decide to bat down ele.

Sword Weavers are decent 1v1 vs non POF metas in wvw. Sadly sword still has low packet damage, very small range and is easy to read. Good luck catching holo, mirage, or firebrand if fleeing from battle. You will never catch the others. And chill from Reapers gibs you so hard.

Expanding on the aura for all atument lines effects:
Zephyr's Boon moved to Major Master getting the effect of aoe super speed on aura detonation.
Combined Elemental shielding and Rock Solid in Major Master to give protection and 1 stack of shot duration stab on aura and longer duration protection and 2 stack of stab on aura detonation.
Soothing Ice moved to Major Master getting a small heal on aura as well as the passive aura on getting crit and aoe resistance and a stronger heal on aura detonation.
(I like to see Elemental Bastion because a barrier on auras and let water take over the aura healing.)

Main note is keep the aura detonation use as is no F5 keep it locked to the weapons them self but move in such a way to add in an elite spec that has an f5 that is build aura detonation its class type (all auras, armor, and boons even the non ele ones).

this might sound rude and i apologize for that, but they must have tried really hard to kick elementalists out of the game , I guess high skill high reward doesnt apply here? you need to be really,really,really good at weaver to be able to compete with average players let alone 1v1
its main purpose is to somehow tank? for a few seconds using alot of heal untill he dies,thats its only purpose, its damage is,.... medicore? at best? any DPS build is laughable with 0 mobility and sustain. alot of self sustain is fine sure but thats litearlly all weaver got, i got to play this game because i really like playing elementalist but this game has by far the most inferior and ridiculously laughable mage class in every game, they made it into a useless tank. horrible design.

@Silence.3702 said:
this might sound rude and i apologize for that, but they must have tried really hard to kick elementalists out of the game , I guess high skill high reward doesnt apply here? you need to be really,really,really good at weaver to be able to compete with average players let alone 1v1
its main purpose is to somehow tank? for a few seconds using alot of heal untill he dies,thats its only purpose, its damage is,.... medicore? at best? any DPS build is laughable with 0 mobility and sustain. alot of self sustain is fine sure but thats litearlly all weaver got, i got to play this game because i really like playing elementalist but this game has by far the most inferior and ridiculously laughable mage class in every game, they made it into a useless tank. horrible design.

@maddoctor.2738 said:
One thing that I was wondering was how badly designed Staff is. Let's take a look at what each attunement is "supposed" to do:

Strongly disagree here, mostly because I kinda feel like you're making up your own definitions and then argue they don't match. Just look at the ingame descriptions for Air Attunement and Earth and you'll see that they don't match your description. Also, fire staff has 2 skills that cause burning so claiming it has none isn't entirely true either.

Staff is actually quite well designed in how the skills on the various attunements can work together. For example, just look at how Lava Font can be double blasted with both Ice Spike and Eruption. That shows quite a lot more thought than some other weapon designs that have setups like 'auto attack, stronger damage skill, charge leap, cc) setups.

@Wraistlin.6072 said:
In truth it really is just the power creep of boons and conditions that HoT unleashed on this game that is killing it. If boons and conditions have such emphasis, then the hybrid classes should be the ones with access to most of these things, while other specific classes only have access to a few. The fact that everyone can now stack 25 stacks of might and or (add high damage condition here), is just a joke. Because of this and the lack of updating defenses on Elementalist you have the current state of the game.

Totally agree here. Stacking buffs is so easy that it devaluates any buffs that are given by hybrid builds.

And while we're at it: if cripple/weakness/chill/poison actually DID something, it'd do a lot for build viability. Stoning isn't a bad skill, but if any enemy that matters has a breakbar and becomes immune to it, then the whole skill is pointless.

@ThiBash.5634 said:
Strongly disagree here, mostly because I kinda feel like you're making up your own definitions and then argue they don't match. Just look at the ingame descriptions for Air Attunement and Earth and you'll see that they don't match your description. Also, fire staff has 2 skills that cause burning so claiming it has none isn't entirely true either.

Staff is actually quite well designed in how the skills on the various attunements can work together. For example, just look at how Lava Font can be double blasted with both Ice Spike and Eruption. That shows quite a lot more thought than some other weapon designs that have setups like 'auto attack, stronger damage skill, charge leap, cc) setups.

Let's use the in-game descriptions then and see why staff isn't following them either:

Air: Heavy damage and control abilities. Where exactly is the Heavy damage on Air Staff? And even control effect is low, Earth has an impassable wall and an immobilize, while air has a sad to use blind, a sad to use knockback and a stun field. Earth has more varied control and in more than a few cases it's better at breaking bars than Air, because Static Field can be unreliable. Staff doesn't follow the in-game description at all. Sword, Scepter, Dagger all do actual HEAVY damage while in Air, but Staff is pathetic for damage.

Earth: Superior damage over time and defensive abilities. A weird, hard to hit skill like Eruption and a skills with a very long cooldown, Shock Wave doesn't make Staff a weapon that deals superior damage over time while attuned to Earth. In fact it's rather terrible at bleeding application compared to every other Elementalist weapon. And the only defensive ability Staff has on Earth is Magnetic Shield the rest of them are pure control. Ever other weapon in the game has more reliable and constant bleeding application.

So Staff doesn't follow the in-game descriptions either. As for burning application, have you tried to see how many burn stacks can all weapon combinations maintain on a target?

Weapons don't have to share the same strict pattern. It's fine that Staff is a power or healing weapon and sucks for condi. Just like Focus is great for defense and condi but sucks for power. It allows all the weapons to have different niches, although obviously not all of these will be relevant in endgame. They never will.

@Feanor.2358 said:
Weapons don't have to share the same strict pattern. It's fine that Staff is a power or healing weapon and sucks for condi. Just like Focus is great for defense and condi but sucks for power. It allows all the weapons to have different niches, although obviously not all of these will be relevant in endgame. They never will.

Focus is an offhand and has a good control skill and a good defensive skill. Go Sword/Focus and you have good heavy damage too.

@Feanor.2358 said:
Weapons don't have to share the same strict pattern. It's fine that Staff is a power or healing weapon and sucks for condi. Just like Focus is great for defense and condi but sucks for power. It allows all the weapons to have different niches, although obviously not all of these will be relevant in endgame. They never will.

Focus is an offhand and has a good control skill and a good defensive skill. Go Sword/Focus and you have good heavy damage too.

Not as heavy as on sword/dagger. Just like scepter/warhorn or dagger/warhorn would always outperform same/focus on tempest.
As for it being offhand, it doesn't really matter. We don't have a second two-hander to compare with.

@Feanor.2358 said:
Weapons don't have to share the same strict pattern. It's fine that Staff is a power or healing weapon and sucks for condi. Just like Focus is great for defense and condi but sucks for power. It allows all the weapons to have different niches, although obviously not all of these will be relevant in endgame. They never will.

Focus is an offhand and has a good control skill and a good defensive skill. Go Sword/Focus and you have good heavy damage too.

Not as heavy as on sword/dagger. Just like scepter/warhorn or dagger/warhorn would always outperform same/focus on tempest.
As for it being offhand, it doesn't really matter. We don't have a second two-hander to compare with.

I don't know when I read what attunements are supposed to do from the in-game descriptions I expect the only two-handed weapon to follow them. After all, if some off-hand or main-hand weapon doesn't follow the descriptions you can always mix and max it with other weapons to make it so. But you can't mix Staff with anything so I find it weird why it's the only weapon set that doesn't follow the in-game provided description.

In fact, in terms of damage, Scepter, Sword, Dagger all do good burning/damage in Fire, heavy damage on Air and good bleeding damage in Earth. Staff does terrible damage in Air and mediocre bleeding in Earth. At least when the damage is concerned every other main weapon follows the pattern, with the exception of the one and only two-handed weapon.

Sword/Dagger deals marginally lower damage than Sword/Focus, meanwhile Staff in Air is garbage.

It's all give and take.
Sword and Dagger both have strong autos in Air, which is why they are the only weapons you'd use without a conjure or using one in a different attunement (no, Scepter is trash in air as well, despite the fast 2).
Sword and Dagger again are the best for burning. And again, Scepter can do it in theory, but it is strictly weaker, damage-wise.
Sword and Dagger offer better mobility, too, while Scepter has none of it in exchange for a little more control and higher burst.
Staff on the other hand has unparalleled cleave, good burst and the best healing potential. Note that despite the big difference in the overall dps between Staff and Sword/Dagger, Staff still has higher burst which keeps it in the fractals meta.

I don't think there's an issue with Staff, really. It shouldn't be good at everything. No weapon should.

@Feanor.2358 said:
It's all give and take.
Sword and Dagger both have strong autos in Air, which is why they are the only weapons you'd use without a conjure or using one in a different attunement (no, Scepter is trash in air as well, despite the fast 2).
Sword and Dagger again are the best for burning. And again, Scepter can do it in theory, but it is strictly weaker, damage-wise.
Sword and Dagger offer better mobility, too, while Scepter has none of it in exchange for a little more control and higher burst.
Staff on the other hand has unparalleled cleave, good burst and the best healing potential. Note that despite the big difference in the overall dps between Staff and Sword/Dagger, Staff still has higher burst which keeps it in the fractals meta.

I don't think there's an issue with Staff, really. It shouldn't be good at everything. No weapon should.

Scepter may be "Trash" in Air (compared to Sword or Dagger) but it's still way better than Staff in Air. All weapons are better than staff in Air and Earth.

I don't think Staff has any issue as a whole, but my problem with Staff is with certain attunements. Not surprising that the things you mentioned are good about Staff, unparalleled cleave, good burst and healing don't come from Air or Earth which is where my argument against the design of the Staff is focused on (and the lacking Burning compared to other options, but that's less important).

But I guess it's the nature of the Staff to be all about Fire and using the rest of the attunements as random filler (as well as the conjures) because our Ele overlords decided that the rest of it should stay garbage for ever so they don't have to learn new rotations/builds.

@Feanor.2358 said:
It's all give and take.
Sword and Dagger both have strong autos in Air, which is why they are the only weapons you'd use without a conjure or using one in a different attunement (no, Scepter is trash in air as well, despite the fast 2).
Sword and Dagger again are the best for burning. And again, Scepter can do it in theory, but it is strictly weaker, damage-wise.
Sword and Dagger offer better mobility, too, while Scepter has none of it in exchange for a little more control and higher burst.
Staff on the other hand has unparalleled cleave, good burst and the best healing potential. Note that despite the big difference in the overall dps between Staff and Sword/Dagger, Staff still has higher burst which keeps it in the fractals meta.

I don't think there's an issue with Staff, really. It shouldn't be good at everything. No weapon should.

What dagger is just weak its the weakest of the weak in-fact its more of an token wepon that has been comply replaced by sword.

Air and fire are the dmg atuments if your not doing dmg when in these 2 atuments then there needs to be an update. Water and earth are the def / support atuments if your not being def or support in these atuments then there needs to be an update. There is no OK mid grond on this point its a yes or no only.

We give passes on air not doing good dmg on staff but its ok for water and earth to be support and tankly on all of the weapons? That what it seems.

@Jski.6180 said:
Water and earth are the def / support atuments if your not being def or support in these atuments then there needs to be an update.

I agree with the rest, since that's what I've been posting too, but not this part. Earth is not only the defensive attunement, it's also the damage over time (bleeding) attunement.

Bleed more of an hold over from the old condis from a few years back to call bleed a real condi dmg for a full wepon or atument dose not realty fit. All of the weapons on some level have a def tool when in earth even main hand dagger has a anty projectia all be it a 2 sec window (wish it was just a block all). But yes some of the def skill in earth atument are lacking use and need to be updated as such.

Any way until anet can account for traits that are so weak no one use them at all and there been no real update to them they have no high ground to stand on for the ele class.
Blinding Ashes, Inscription (trait), Serrated Stones, Rock Solid, Diamond Skin, Stop, Drop, and Roll, Bountiful Power, Tempestuous Aria, Imbued Melodies, Lucid Singularity, and Woven Stride all traits that are borderline worthless that are effectually not used in any game type at all.

What the point of these why has there been no real update for these for years (Woven Stride not been out as long but has become worthless as a GM at this point). Tempest's traits are the worst of all where you have 2 GM that are not used and are weaker then most classes master level.

ya allot of those old traits are not getting looked at is kinda sad however what they did was pretty good for ele in general. Well the aura change was kinda what ever cool but unfortunately not much in the line of useful enough I would be interested to see if anyone can make a good build from it though sounds kinda hard. I have noticed a trend they seem to make small but impact changes to skills and traits and only one large overhaul per balance patch. they look at what happens with it and then continue.

I am still hoping for that conjure rework for qol improvements. I already posted it and its in many locations on the forums probably one of the most asked for changes to ele. please anet

@Feanor.2358 said:
It's all give and take.
Sword and Dagger both have strong autos in Air, which is why they are the only weapons you'd use without a conjure or using one in a different attunement (no, Scepter is trash in air as well, despite the fast 2).
Sword and Dagger again are the best for burning. And again, Scepter can do it in theory, but it is strictly weaker, damage-wise.
Sword and Dagger offer better mobility, too, while Scepter has none of it in exchange for a little more control and higher burst.
Staff on the other hand has unparalleled cleave, good burst and the best healing potential. Note that despite the big difference in the overall dps between Staff and Sword/Dagger, Staff still has higher burst which keeps it in the fractals meta.

I don't think there's an issue with Staff, really. It shouldn't be good at everything. No weapon should.

What dagger is just weak its the weakest of the weak in-fact its more of an token wepon that has been comply replaced by sword.

Air and fire are the dmg atuments if your not doing dmg when in these 2 atuments then there needs to be an update. Water and earth are the def / support atuments if your not being def or support in these atuments then there needs to be an update. There is no OK mid grond on this point its a yes or no only.

We give passes on air not doing good dmg on staff but its ok for water and earth to be support and tankly on all of the weapons? That what it seems.

For a good while Fire and Earth have been the damage attunements on staff for weavers. I see no problem with that.